Orchid V4, V4+ Programing Tool Support

Heinz

csj wrote: »

If I decide to change my CPS back to BT (from Primus) will I have to modify the Lawry Orchid program? I'm thinking particularly of the new "evening" hours for BT now starting at 19.99 whereas i understand that primus still starts at 18.00.

If I do have to change the programme, I'd be grateful for guidelines on what needs to be done.

Yes, although Kevin's spreadsheet is 'the Heinz program' (which assumes a BT line, a CPS provider giving inclusive evening and weekend calls and a 18185 account), it is set up for the old 0600 to 1800 'weekday' period BT used to use (which never did match Primus's 0800 to 1800 but that's another story).

Hence, you are right, if you change to BT's Unlimited Evening & Weekend plan, you would need to change cells C17 and C19 to reflect the 0700 and 1900 times BT now uses.

csj_2

Thanks Heinz - that's very useful. Hopefully, it shouldn't be beyond my abilities to change this setting in the Excel program.

As your message was coming through, the postman was also delivering a letter from BT inviting me to sign up to BT's Unlimited Anytime Plan giving 3 months of FREE (their capitalisation) calls to UK landlines with a 12 month minimum term - becoming £4.99/month after the 3 months.

Is this plan better or worse than the Free Evenings and Weekend Calls plan from BT which I believe you generally recommend?

Thanks again

Heinz

As always, it depends on your use. That £4.99 gives you inclusive 01/02/03/0845/0870 calls of up to 60 minutes each at all times.

Ignoring the 0845/0870 calls (most of us avoid them whenever possible anyway), do you make more than a hundred weekday daytime 01/02/03 calls each month? If you do, then £4.99 beats the £5 which 100 such calls via 18185 would cost.

Simples!

P.S. BT's Unlimited Evening & Weekend plan (which is still available but which is seriously un-advertised now) is free if you agree to a 'renewable' 12 month contract. BT are supposed to send you a letter about a month before the 12 months is up giving you the option of cancelling or, by doing nothing, agreeing to another 12 months. Unfortunately, they don't always do so.

Nevertheless, I recommend BT's plans for those who aren't already on one of the free Primus CPS plans just because it saves a lot of aggravation (and a second bill for those who worry about that).

I'M OFF TO TENERIFE AFTER VOTING TODAY MONEY-SAVERS - SEE YOU IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS!

seanhodges

Hi,
I just discovered this thread and fantastic tool.

I have an Orchid, and knew that the support from the company had ended and despaired of manually reprogramming the box.

I have just ordered a £5.50 USB2 modem from ebay and I hope it will work with my mac. I have Excel on the 'mac' side of my mac, as well as the 'pc' side (it has the ability to boot up into Windows XP). Has anyone used the macro successfully from a mac, or will I have to use it from XP?

Cheers

Sean

seanhodges

Answered my own question; Excel for Mac 2008 doesn't support Visual Basic macros, so the routing table won't work.

No problem, I'll just boot up as Win XP and try it there.

kaichandler

Just catching up with the news that Orchid no longer support the dialler and feeling VERY grateful to the experts here for stepping in.

So as I understand things, cwdialler no longer works as it relies on the orchid management platform that no longer exists.

Now, I don't think I need to reprogram it at the moment so that's not a problem, but I normally reset the time after power cuts and spring/autumn change by dialling as per its documentation, ie ***12#4567890*3.

Does this still work? Or is there another way to reset the time?

thanks!

Kai

Lplates

In a nutshell, now that CWClient is no longer supported, the only (straightforward) way of programming your Orchid dialer is to send it DTMF tone sequences from some local source. This source could be a suitable phone, or a modem or similar device.

The sequence for setting the time is

* * # 0 0 0 0 * [11 digits] * 2

where the 11 digits represent the time, day of week and date information.

You will find all this detailed in the dialer documentation, but if you have so far been doing this twice a year at the start and end of BST you are presumably up to speed already.

Omega_1

Interestingly, I have been manually programming to the 'Heinz' formula as per the above but when I spoke with the US yesterday it advised " 3p per minute"

Lplates

That’s a bit odd. I just called the US via 18185 prefix, and got an announcement ‘half a p per minute’. So I can’t really explain why when your call went through you got a ‘3p per minute’ announcement. I’m even more mystified when, looking at the International Call Checker, I can’t find any carrier which charges 3p per minute to the USA.

Have you tried bypassing the dialer and just dialing 18185 plus the destination number?

Omega_1

Have just done as you suggest and 1/2p. Did a re-dial through V4 and same 1/2p. Anno Domini maybe ? !! Have booked a hearing test ! - thanks anyway.